When we moved into our house back in 2005, Dad and I
painted the whole first floor while Nels was away on a business trip. Mom found it endearing that the couple who
owned the local hardware store closed early on Wednesdays so they could go
golfing. It was a memorable time with my
parents, even as the painting process seemed impossibly long and tedious. Mom said it was their best vacation, but that
may have been the fumes she inhaled from the solvent she used to scrape old
paint from the wood trim.
Fast forward to the present and the need for change
is in the air again. But…but. You know how
it is when something needs to get done, but the job is so big you want to pare
your ambitions down to lying on the couch and binge-watching The
Crown? Luckily,
when Nels asked when I wanted to start painting, I said, “tomorrow” and he
thought I meant it. The painting tools
came out of the shed, new supplies were purchased at Ace Hardware, and raggedy
t-shirts and sweatpants were dragged out of drawers.
We had to start where painting always starts, the
ceiling. After two days of moving paint
sheets around and trying to determine if I had actually painted sections or was
just painting the same space over and over, we were done. The ceiling was a vast sea of whiteness and I
couldn’t tell where I had been and what I had missed. I still can’t.
After diving into Pinterest, I was convinced that
the walls should be blue to contrast with the brown furniture. Plus I wanted a darker color to pop against
the new white windows we were putting in.
But what shade of blue? How
light, how dark? How gray, how
purple? Then I brought home some samples
and realized there was no freaking way I was committing an entire floor to blue. I gave up on being creative and went with Benjamin
Moore’s Edgecomb
Gray,
a reasonable neutral guaranteed to look good in sunlight and shade.
There is a lot to know about paint and
painting. And what you know about painting,
you have to know about yourself.
Benjamin Moore has a paint style called Aura which dries really fast and
requires a different painting
technique. Sorry,
no. Neither one of us felt like
experimenting. This project also reinforced
our knowledge of one another. Nels is
the detail guy and painted four coats of white, two of primer, two of paint, on
all eight dark-stained window frames. Because
the semester was starting, I was only available in fits and starts. While I was happy to take down art and
switchplates, spackle holes, wipe down surfaces, and roll some first coats of
color, he ended up doing 90% of the work.
I am proud that he let me paint
some of the baseboard heaters. That
showed his faith in me, as those required some technique. Our relationship survived because we stuck
within our respective zones—I picked the colors and did the sloppy grunt work
and Nels did everything else.
Speaking of couples who let each other do what they
do, my Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Andy have been married for a very long time and
are clearly used to each other’s quirks.
She still laughs at his goofy jokes and puts up with his stubbornness,
and he ensures that she, who needs an oxygen tank 24/7 and can only see
peripherally, has what she needs.
Aunt Chartie (or as I grew up calling her, Aunt
“Shotty” from my mother’s southern pronunciation) and I talked on the phone
shortly after Thanksgiving. She and
Uncle Andy had gone over to a friend’s house, and the friend, in his 80’s just
like them, had served cranberry sauce from a can. Later that week, Andy decided he wanted real
cranberry sauce and made it himself with her input. She and I discussed what it took to do
something like that outside the context of holiday requirements. She said, “It takes the willingness and the
stuff.” Not only does a person have to
want to put in the time, but they also have to obtain what is needed and have
support.
I recalled this as Nels and I were painting over the
last six weeks. It was a huge project
and we just had to make the decision to begin.
Luckily, we could afford to buy the paint and our schedules are somewhat
flexible, so we had the willingness AND the stuff. Similarly, a student must be willing to learn,
but she must also have the “stuff”--including time, support, and adult care, to
do the work. Too often we forget that
there are multiple aspects to learning.
Aunt Chartie died last week at the age of 85. Every time I look at our freshly painted
home, or work with students, I will remember her words.
